Phantom Nights [Mass Market Paperback]

John Farris (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 2005

The year is 1952. Fourteen-year-old Alex Gambier is rebellious by nature and scarred by childhood tragedy in the southern community of Evening Shade. An outcast in his own family, mute from a bout with diptheria at an early age, Alex expresses himself by writing imaginative stories and by conceiving daredevil stunts that test all of his physical rescources while putting his life in extreme danger.

The aftermath of one of his hair-raising stunts finds Alex in the care of a young black nurse named Mally Shaw. An unlikely friendship results, which is ended by an unspeakable crime that costs Mally her life.

Or not quite ended, for Mally finds herself trapped in a nether world by the force of Alex's will and his need to exact a terrifying revenge on the man responsible for Mally's death.
But the revenge he seeks is a two-edged sword, the price Alex's own soul as he recklessly pursues his quarry in a chilling double twist climax that surpasses anything John Farris has written before.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Farris takes a break from the paranormal pyrotechnics of his Fury series (The Fury, etc.) with this well-wrought period tale of vengeance from beyond the grave. It's 1952 in the sultry Tennessee town of Night Shade, and black nurse Mally Shaw has just heard her white patient, Priest Howard, use his dying breath to accuse his slimy son, Leland, of being a thief. Soon thereafter, Leland, who assumes (correctly) that his daddy has entrusted Mally with criminal evidence that could sink his budding political career, abducts Mally to his home, where he rapes and kills her and then covers up the evidence to make her death look accidental. Only days before, though, good-hearted Mally had shown kindness to Alex Gambier, an emotionally troubled mute boy whose brother is the town's deputy sheriff, and her psychic rapport with Alex persists after death. This is a more streamlined story than Farris's usual supernatural extravaganzas, but the plot still has ample room to twist and turn around the complications of Alex's inability to speak and Mally's second-class citizenship in a racially divided town. Solidly developed characters and an authentic sense of period and place contribute to the story's impact, as does the unusual blend of tenderness and grue. Farris remains one of the most effectively surprising horror writers of his generation. (Feb. 15)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Several usually unassociated natives of little Evening Shade, Tennessee, fatefully cross paths one pressure-cooking August 1952 weekend. After his banker father's funeral, U.S. Senate candidate Leland Howard decides to wind down with pretty Mally Shaw, his father's nurse at the end, and winds up raping and killing her. Mute 14-year-old Alex Gambier, whom Mally had befriended after cleaning him up in the wake of a death-defying prank, is a hidden witness, as he lets his brother Bobby, the town's acting sheriff, know. But going after Leland is a major career risk, and Bobby has to be prodded into deeply investigating by Mally's long-estranged father, a pathologist who quickly gathers evidence that shames Bobby into action. Only Alex knows that the justice seekers have a crucial ally--Mally's ghost, whom Alex has kept from fully passing away by the force of his need for trust and revenge. With engaging characters and deft evocation of early 1950s racism, Farris makes a routine, mildly supernaturalized rural police procedural rather better than it could have been. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books (December 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765346885
• ISBN-13: 978-0765346889
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,617,762 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars John Farris should outsell us all, April 16, 2005

By 

Steven Harriman "Steven Spruill" (Arlington, Virginia United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Phantom Nights (Hardcover)

Phantom Nights is a masterpiece of a novel, which deserves to be read far more widely than it has been to this point. John Farris, long a master of the literary thriller, brings all of his many novelistic gifts to this latest effort, resulting in a read that is always engaging and ultimately deeply satisfying. Mally Shaw and her father, Dr. Ramses ValJean, people of color in a sleepy southern town of the 1950s, are complex and moving characters, rendered by a consummate artist who sees deeply into the human heart. Bobby Gambier, acting sheriff of the town, is equally complex and appealing, and his mute brother Alex is as powerful and sympathetic a portrait of a tormented young teenager as you will find in any novel, commercial or literary. The evil in this novel is made larger, more real and menacing, by its very smallness. No mustache twisting cardboard villains here. No flat character of any kind. There is not a soul in this novel who does not live and breathe and move us in some way. Farris has that ultimate gift from which all else in a great novel flows: we care about the people he brings to us. The prose itself is so fine, so polished, that we effortlessly fall through it into the beating heart of the novel, where the heat makes us sweat, and we taste the grease at the local diner. The phantom train, a motif which appears in other memorable Farris novels, becomes a vividly chilling device in this one. Among his fellow novelists, John Farris has long been known as the master. I've been published fourteen times without ever writing half so well, try as I might. If life were fair, John Farris would be a perennial best selling author. With his many other talents, we are lucky he's still bringing us these stunningly good novels. You're in the right place to order "Phantom Nights" right this minute. Do it! Then read it slowly if you can, for it is too soon over. And when you are done, spread the good word.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book Could Make a Memorable Film, March 28, 2005

By 

Craig Larson (Maple Grove, MN USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Phantom Nights (Hardcover)

John Farris does such a good job of drawing his characters in this novel that I had no trouble picturing them in my mind as I read. From villainous Leland Howard, to deputy sheriff Bobby Gambier and his mute brother Alex, to Mally Shaw and her father, Dr. Ramses Valjean, these are some of the more memorable and three-dimensional characters I've encountered lately. In the hands of the right person, this could make a great movie, with a very meaty role in Dr. Valjean and his forensics expertise. The story is a mixture of mystery and the supernatural and is handled with great expertise. It's nice to see Mr. Farris taking a break from the all-out horror pyrotechnics of his Fury sequels and turning his great talent to a quieter, though no less masterly tale. Very highly recommended!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Masterpiece!, February 20, 2005

By 

Mark J. Sieber (Hampton, Virginia United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Phantom Nights (Hardcover)

John Farris only writes excellent books, but Phantom Nights is his best in ages. It's a brilliant southern gothic ghost story, with a beautifully vivid setting in the 1950's deep south. Suspense and horror do not get any better than this!